


Lame

by ivyblossom



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Unrequited Love, born again Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-07-18
Updated: 2002-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:04:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyblossom/pseuds/ivyblossom





	Lame

There are two of us, a man and a woman. You can call us anything you like; call him Tom, James, Tony, Harry. Call me Winifred, Dolly, Ginny. It doesn't matter. The story is the same no matter what we're called.

I'm sitting across from him, across my own table. I bought this table two years ago when I left school. It's part of a set, a dining set with four chairs. I sit with my arms loosely draped on the arm rests, as deliberately calm and relaxed as I can manage. I'm practicing this, the relaxed, nonchalant look. My cup of coffee is steaming on the table in front of me. He has his feet propped up; he sits on the diagonal, one elbow pitched over the top of the backrest. He is talking, his hands gesturing toward me, but I'm only half-listening. The coffee is too strong and he is speaking a little too loudly.

There was a time, long ago now, when I would have done anything for this man. That feeling gave me so much purpose, so much hope and trust and certainty. There was a time when I thought men and women fit together like a box and its top, one bit of hard paper slipping into the other side, a match made in heaven. I always imagined that I would be married by now, a youthful conceit that I can really only bring myself to remember when I'm in his presence.

More recently I have come to think of this man, this friend of mine (nominally), as a bit lame. Lame like a limping man, like something in him is broken, missing. Maybe there's a phantom limb somewhere, something to help him keep his balance that just never grew, was never there to start with. His lameness is accentuated by his reliance an odd crutch, a set of moral beliefs I just can't get behind. He was beautiful once, in an intense, brooding way. In a cast-away, angry, orphaned kind of way. He saved the world more times than I can count, but even that gets tired after a while.

I could have accepted the heroism, the anger, the sort of vacant look he gets when talking about anything other than his enemies or his favourite sports. What really makes him so lame is his new religion. Those people, the immaculately reborn, they prey on the emotionally weak like him, people from foreign countries, people with no family, people who have more heartache than they have room for. They saw the lameness on him like a neon sign and swooped down like vultures. Now every couple of months he asks about my relationship with Jesus, he invites me to his cultish meetings and bland movie nights, and I've really had enough of it. He's still a virgin, and while I like to think I wouldn't judge a person on their sexual experience, I really do think less of him because of it. Sue me.

He's talking about another woman. We do this often; he comes to my house for brunch after one of his revival meetings or prayer circles or whatever it is they do, and I make soup, or sandwiches, or fried eggs. I'm a little worried that perhaps I still like his company because he makes for such a stark and flattering contrast. I live in this cheap little flat, I has more debt hanging over my head than I like to think about, and I still don't really know what I'm doing with my life, but at least I'm not him. At least I'm not lame.

"...and then she said, oh sure, yeah, come by for dinner, and I was so shocked, I didn't think she would..."

There is no secret here either. He thinks he is in love with this woman he's talking about, an old friend of ours. Her name doesn't matter either; call her Jane, Grace, Judy, Hermione. It's all the same, whatever name you use. They've been spending more time together recently, talking about things they both understand but I don't care about. Icons, paintings, theological points that bore me and make me think about dirty old men with little boys under their skirts. I've never heard them talk, but I've heard all about it from him. She says very little about him, really. She acts as if he's just like he used to be.

"I love her," he sighs, his hands dropping into his lap. "I love her so much."

I want to tell him the truth about her. I want to tell him that she's not who he thinks she is, that she is just being kind, that she thinks he's as lame as I do. But he's too lame to be entirely honest with, too earnest, too intense. I can't take him seriously because he takes himself too seriously. We're all humouring him because it seems like the kindest thing to do. We were all friends once, after all, that's the right thing to do. This other woman, she is kinder than most are, kinder than I am. She makes time for him. She talks him at the same earnest pitch that he uses when he talks to us. He is mistaking her kindness for something else.

"Is he coming over today?" she asked this morning, her thumb stroking my left nipple and her thigh tucked neatly between mine. I told her that he was, and we left it at that.

All that's left of her in this flat right now is a pink toothbrush that I bought for her, a cloth in the bathroom, a bit of her hair that's fallen behind the toilet. That's all. No evidence to conceal, really. She gives me what I want but leaves no trace of herself anywhere. Sometimes I think she reaches into me and takes my memory of her when she goes, so that I have to concentrate to remember the composition of her face.

We only talk about him peripherally, she and I. There are lots of things we only talk about peripherally.

"So what do you think?" he asks, breathing out carefully, his whole body rigid with the stiff morality of his newfound people. "Do you think she'll marry me?"

What can I say, what can I do other than smile tightly? I'd like to laugh, but I can't. I take my coffee cup in my hands instead, nodding around the words I pretend I have on the tip of my tongue, taking a deep gulp and hoping I'll blurt out something reasonable.

"Maybe," I say, my voice coming out more scratched and ragged than I'd expected, as if I've swallowed my confidence, my certainty. I cough and shift my chair back, getting up to check on the soup.

Would she marry him? What frightens me most is that, for all the nights I have spent with her soft skin against my palms, the taste of her on my tongue, the smell of her warmth inside my brain, I have no idea if she would marry him. I know she wouldn't marry me.

He looks satisfied, his hands clutched together in his lap now, with his hard, white knuckles and clean fingernails. He is a ball of tension; his eyes dart back and forth like a lizard. Wound tight by Jesus and sexual frustration, his heel taps over and over against the linoleum.

He must think about her, masturbate painfully, and then cry over his weakness and sin. I find this idea comforting, and I realize how hateful that is.

He will only stay a little while longer. Long enough to finish his brunch, tie his shoelaces too tightly, and then dash off again like animal on fire. He has Bible study this afternoon, and as always he will invite me to come along. I will refuse as politely as I can, pretend to have some other engagement, and he will leave.

Tonight she'll come over with a half-finished book in one hand and plastic bag with a clean pair of underpants and a shirt in the other. I will not ask about her dinner with him. She will not ask me about brunch. We will continue the charade that we are good friends, that nothing that happens between us actually means anything, and that I will be the maid of honour at the dream wedding she is still planning in her head. And we will again avoid talking about the fact that I am in love with her.  



End file.
